| |
| O BLACK and unknown bards of long ago, | |
| How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? | |
| How, in your darkness, did you come to know | |
| The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre? | |
| Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? | 5 |
| Who first from out the still watch, lone and long, | |
| Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise | |
| Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song? | |
| |
| Heart of what slave poured out such melody | |
| As “Steal away to Jesus”? On its strains | 10 |
| His spirit must have nightly floated free, | |
| Though still about his hands he felt his chains. | |
| Who heard great “Jordan roll”? Whose starward eye | |
| Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he | |
| That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, | 15 |
| “Nobody knows de trouble I see”? | |
| |
| What merely living clod, what captive thing, | |
| Could up toward God through all its darkness grope, | |
| And find within its deadened heart to sing | |
| These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope? | 20 |
| How did it catch that subtle undertone, | |
| That note in music heard not with the ears? | |
| How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown, | |
| Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears. | |
| |
| Not that great German master in his dream | 25 |
| Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars | |
| At the creation, ever heard a theme | |
| Nobler than “Go down, Moses.” Mark its bars | |
| How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir | |
| The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung | 30 |
| Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were | |
| That helped make history when Time was young. | |
| |
| There is a wide, wide wonder in it all, | |
| That from degraded rest and servile toil | |
| The fiery spirit of the seer should call | 35 |
| These simple children of the sun and soil. | |
| O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, | |
| You—you alone, of all the long, long line | |
| Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed, | |
| Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine. | 40 |
| |
| You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings; | |
| No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean | |
| Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings | |
| You touched in chord with music empyrean. | |
| You sting far better than you knew; the songs | 45 |
| That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed | |
| Still live,—but more than this to you belongs: | |
| You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ. | |
| |
